The
ten etchings of Aléa (1982) spread out into each of
the ten poems by Réjean Beaudoin, forming a whole in which
traces of oriental calligraphy are most clearly evident: signs striped
markings, mysterious scripts, visible poems. These brightly coloured
pages (sepia, brown, ochre) take form as abstract illuminations or
still-to-be-invented instruments and are infused with an impalpable
breath, like a gauze curtain trembling in the breeze over an open
window. . . . The poems are brief (two, three, or four lines) and
rigorously unadorned; their subtle assertions and discreet, deceptively
transparent aphorisms speak of books, libraries, words, and music;
of dew, morning rain, dawn over the city, or the footstep of a sandal.